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A few weeks ago, I was accosted by a disarmingly elderly-looking salesman during the after-party of a gaming event. While everyone else clutched refreshing beverages in their keyboard-calloused hands, he brandished a clipboard in much the same way a soldier would handle a firearm. His spiel, which ended up sounding sort of like an elevator pitch for Gamification, was all at once targeted and messy – like a SWAT shotgun that fired heaping gobs of butter. It was the weirdest thing. I walked away – or escaped, really – not quite grasping what he was trying to tell me, but understanding that he wanted people to notice the goddamn hell out of it.

And now, I’m getting an eerily similar feeling from the latest trailer for Ubisoft and Dead Island dev Techland’s Mad Riders because, well, goodness. Lots of things happen in this trailer. Occasionally, they’re even related. First it’s a parody, then it’s a parody of itself, and by the end, I think it might even be parody of that parody. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll cringe. You might even do all three at once. So maybe have an ambulance on speed dial – just in case.

So that was a thing. In an equally rapid-fire twist, Mad Riders was only announced a few days ago, and it’s soaring onto download platforms on May 30 for a mere £7.99. In between all the whatever-that-was, it looked like a solid spot of dumb fun, too – although Techland’s previous high-flying off-road offering, Nail’d, suffered from inconsistent AI and physics, and a general lack of modes. Mad Riders, meanwhile, sounds like a sequel in all but name, so hopefully it’s doing more than simply sprinkle in a handful of new tracks. Then again, at that price, perhaps I shouldn’t expect too much more. And I suppose there are worse fates than 45 blindingly fast tracks’ worth of ramping ATVs so high I can see the curvature of the Earth.

No offence, but few people outside of the “scene” do care about the finer intricacies of all the music subgenres. It only really matters to the fans of that particular genre or those that attach identities to it.
In that sense, calling it dubstep is people being very nice and considerate to fans. Consider the alternatives. Yeh, calling it dubstep is being nice.

Well, in a large enough sense, a lot of the ’90s music you refer to was techno. Of course, that doesn’t rule out the tens (could be hundreds?) of sub-genres. I understand your “concern”, it’s the same with the Rock/Heavy metal scene, which I have a bigger concern for and tend to want to know as many sub-genres as possible and why they are what they are. When it comes to dubstep, I guess I am a casual listener (I love Blackmill’s music, which, spot on, is not exactly dubstep but dubstep with a lot of other stuff while Skrillex almost bores me to tears) so pardon the mistake, but in a pretty big sense, it could be called dubstep. But if it’s not, I apologize. Also, superb trailer.

What you say makes sense … but then, all the other games companies are paying other marketing firms to create trailers for them, and none of them seem to contain the distilled awesome that Techland’s do.

This attitude baffles me. If you don’t like Nathan’s writing, fine. (Personally I think he’s doing a pretty good job, but that’s neither here nor there.) But suggesting that he’s “wasting your time”? Acting like he has some sort of duty to be concise? Tip: you’re reading a ‘news’ article about a trailer for a video game. Some extra, strictly unnecessary yet entertaining words before the article “gets to the point” could not possibly increase the degree to which you are wasting your time.